Pascendi Dominici Gregis

Encyclical on the Doctrine of the Modernists
His Holiness Pope Pius X
September 8, 1907

ONE OF THE PRIMARY OBLIGATIONS assigned by Christ to the office
divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord's flock is that of guarding
with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the
saints, rejecting the profane novelties of words and the gainsaying of
knowledge falsely so called. There has never been a time when this
watchfulness of the supreme pastor was not necessary to the Catholic
body, for owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have
never been lacking "men speaking perverse things,"[1] "vain talkers and
seducers,"[2] "erring and driving into error."[3] It must, however, be
confessed that these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the
number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new
and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the
Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom
of Christ. Wherefore We may no longer keep silence, lest We should seem
to fail in Our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope
of wiser counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be set down to
lack of diligence in the discharge of Our office.

2. That We should act without delay in this matter is made imperative
especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not
only among the Church's open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and
deplored, in her very bosom, and are the more mischievous the less they
keep in the open. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to
the Catholic laity, and, what is much more sad, to the ranks of the
priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking
the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly
imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church,
and lost to all sense
of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and,
forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred
in the work of Christ, not sparing even the Person of the Divine
Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious audacity, they degrade to the condition
of a simple and ordinary mall.

3. Although they express their astonishment that We should number them
amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised
that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition
of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets,
their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in
regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the
Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for
her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is
present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is
the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more
intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but
to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once
having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison
through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which
they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further,
none is more skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a
thousand noxious devices; for they play the double part of rationalist
and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into
error; and as audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no
conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust
forward with pertinacity and assurance To this must be added the fact,
which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life
of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every
branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for
irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all hut
fatal to the hope of cure that their very doctrines have given such a
bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no
restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe
to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and
obstinacy.

Once indeed We had hopes of recalling them to a better mind, and to this
end We first of all treated them with kindness as Our children, then with
severity; and at last We have had recourse, though with great reluctance,
to public reproof. It is known to you, Venerable Brethren, how unavailing
have been Our efforts. For a moment they have bowed their head, only to
lift it more arrogantly than before. If it were a matter which concerned
them alone, We might perhaps have overlooked it; but the security of the
Catholic name is at stake. Wherefore We must interrupt a silence which it
would be criminal to prolong, that We may point out to the whole Church,
as they really are, men who are badly disguised.

4. It is one of the cleverest devices of the Modernists (as they are
commonly and rightly called) to present their doctrines without order and
systematic arrangement, in a scattered and disjointed manner, so as to
make it appear as if their minds were in doubt or hesitation, whereas in
reality they are quite fixed and steadfast. For this reason it will be of
advantage, Venerable Brethren, to bring their teachings together here
into one group, and to point out their interconnection, and thus to pass
to an examination of the sources of the errors, and to prescribe remedies
for averting the evil results.

5. To proceed in an orderly manner in this somewhat abstruse subject, it
must first of all be noted that the Modernist sustains and includes
within himself a manifold personality; he is a philosopher, a believer, a
theologian, an historian, a critic, an apologist, a reformer. These roles
must be clearly distinguished one from another by all who would
accurately understand their system and thoroughly grasp the principles
and the outcome of their doctrines.

6. We begin, then, with the philosopher. Modernists place the foundation
of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is commonly called
Agnosticism. According to this teaching human reason is confined entirely
within the field of phenomena, that is to say, to things that appear, and
in the manner in which they appear: it has neither the right nor the
power to overstep these limits. Hence it is incapable of lifting itself
up to God, and of recognizing His existence, even by means of visible
things. From this it is inferred that God can never be the direct object
of science, and that, as regards history, He must not be considered as an
historical subject. Given these premises, everyone will at once perceive
what becomes of Natural Theology, of the motives of credibility, of
external revelation. The modernists simply sweep them entirely aside;
they include them in Intellectualism, which they denounce as a system
which is ridiculous and long since defunct. Nor does the fact that the
Church has formally condemned these portentous errors exercise the
slightest restraint upon them. Yet the Vatican Council has defined, "If
anyone says that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known
with certainty by the natural light of human reason by means of the
things that are made, let him be anathema";[4] and also, "If anyone says
that it is not possible or not expedient that man be taught, through the
medium of divine revelation, about God and the worship to be paid Him,
let him be anathema";[5] and finally, "If anyone says that divine
revelation cannot be made credible by external signs, and that therefore
men should be drawn to the faith only by their personal internal
experience or by private inspiration, let him be anathema."[6] It may be
asked, in what way do the Modernists contrive to make the transition from
Agnosticism, which is a state of pure nescience, to scientific and
historic Atheism, which is a doctrine of positive denial; and
consequently, by what legitimate process of reasoning, they proceed from
the fact of ignorance as to whether God has in fact intervened in the
history of the human race or not, to explain this history, leaving God
out altogether, as if He really had not intervened. Let him answer who
can. Yet it is a fixed and established principle among them that both
science and history must be atheistic: and within their boundaries there
is room for nothing but phenomena; God and all that is divine are utterly
excluded. We shall soon see clearly what, as a consequence of this most
al)surd teaching, must be held touching the most sacred Person of Christ,
and the mysteries of His life and death, and of His Resurrection and
Ascension into Heaven.

7. However, this Agnosticism is only the negative part of the system of
the Modernists: the positive part consists in what they call vital
immanence. Thus they advance from one to the other. Religion, whether
natural or supernatural, must, like every other fact, admit of some
explanation. But when natural theology has been destroyed, and the road
to revelation closed by the rejection of the arguments of credibility,
and all external revelation absolutely denied, it is clear that this
explanation will be sought in vain outside of man himself. It must,
therefore, be looked for in man; and since religion is a form of life,
the explanation must certainly be found in the life of man. In this way
is formulated the principle of religious immanence. Moreover, the first
actuation, so to speak, of every vital phenomenon--and religion, as noted
above, belongs to this category--is due to a certain need or impulsion;
but speaking more particularly of life, it has its origin in a movement
of the heart, which movement is called a sense. Therefore, as God is the
object of religion, we must conclude that faith, which is the basis and
foundation of all religion, must consist in a certain interior sense,
originating in a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is
experienced only in special and favorable circumstances. cannot of itself
appertain to the domain of consciousness, but is first latent beneath
consciousness, or, to borrow a term from modern philosophy, in the
subconsciousness, where also its root lies hidden and undetected.

It may perhaps be asked how it is that this need of the divine which man
experiences within himself resolves itself into religion? To this
question the Modernist reply would be as follows: Science and history are
confined within two boundaries, the one external, namely, the visible
world, the other internal, which is consciousness. When one or other of
these limits has been reached, there can be no further progress, for
beyond is the unknowable. In presence of this unknowable, whether it is
outside man and beyond the visible world of nature, or lies hidden within
the subconsciousness, the need of the divine in a soul which is prone to
religion excites-- according to the principles of Fideism, without any
previous advertence of the mind--a certain special sense, and this sense
possesses, implied within itself both as its own object and as its
intrinsic cause, the divine reality itself, and in a way unites man with
God. It is this sense to which Modernists give the name of faith, and
this is what they hold to be the beginning of religion.

8. But we have not yet reached the end of their philosophizing, or, to
speak more accurately, of their folly. Modernists find in this sense not
only faith, but in and with faith, as they understand it, they affirm
that there is also to be found revelation. For, indeed, what more is
needed to constitute a revelation? Is not that religious sense which is
perceptible in the conscience, revelation, or at least the beginning of
revelation? Nay, is it not God Himself manifesting Himself, indistinctly,
it is true, in this same religious sense, to the soul? And they add:
Since God is both the object and the cause of faith, this revelation is
at the same time of God and from God, that is to say, God is both the
Revealer and the Revealed.

From this, Venerable Brethren, springs that most absurd tenet of the
Modernists, that every religion, according to the different aspect under
which it is viewed, must be considered as both natural and supernatural.
It is thus that they make consciousness and revelation synonymous. From
this they derive the law laid down as the universal standard, according
to which religious consciousness is to be put on an equal footing with
revelation, and that to it all must submit, even the supreme authority of
the Church, whether in the capacity of teacher, or in that of legislator
in the province of sacred liturgy or discipline.

9. In all this process, from which, according to the Modernists, faith
and revelation spring, one point is to be particularly noted, for it is
of capital importance on account of the historicocritical corollaries
which they deduce from it. The unknowable they speak of does not present
itself to faith as something solitary and isolated; hut on the contrary
in close conjunction with some phenomenon, which, though it belongs to
the realms of science or history, yet to some extent exceeds their
limits. Such a phenomenon may be a fact of nature containing within
itself something mysterious; or it may be a man, whose character,
actions, and words cannot, apparently, be reconciled with the ordinary
laws of history. Then faith, attracted by the unknowable which is united
with the phenomenon, seizes upon the whole phenomenon, and, as it were,
permeates it with its own life. From this two things follow. The first is
a sort of transfiguration of the phenomenon, by its elevation above its
own true conditions, an elevation by which it becomes more adapted to
clothe itself with the form of the divine character which faith will
bestow upon it. The second consequence is a certain disfiguration--so it
may be called--of the same phenomenon, arising from the fact that faith
attributes to it, when stripped of the circumstances of place and time,
characteristics which it does not really possess; and this takes place
especially in the case of the phenomena of the past, and the more fully
in the measure of their antiquity. From these two principles the
Modernists deduce two laws, which, when united with a third which they
have already derived from agnosticism, constitute the foundation of
historic criticism. An example may be sought in the Person of Christ. In
the Person of Christ, they say, science and history encounter nothing
that is not human. Therefore, in virtue of the first canon deduced from
agnosticism, whatever there is in His history suggestive of the divine
must be rejected. Then, according to the second canon, the historical
Person of Christ was transfigured by faith; therefore everything that
raises it above historical conditions must be removed. Lastly, the third
canon, which lays down that the Person of Christ has been disfigured by
faith, requires that everything should be excluded, deeds and words and
all else, that is not in strict keeping with His character, condition,
and education, and with the place and time in which He lived. A method of
reasoning which is passing strange, but in it we have the Modernist
criticism.

10. It is thus that the religious sense, which through the agency of
vital immanence emerges from the lurking-places of the subconsciousness,
is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has
been or ever will be in any religion. This sense, which was at first only
rudimentary and almost formless, under the influence of that mysterious
principle from which it originated, gradually matured with the progress
of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a certain form. This,
then, is the origin of all. even of supernatural religion. For religions
are mere developments of this religious sense. Nor is the Catholic
religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the rest; for it was
engendered, by the process of vital immanence, and by no other way, in
the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose
like has never been, nor will be. In hearing these things we shudder
indeed at so great an audacity of assertion and so great a sacrilege. And
yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of
unbelievers. There are Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these
things openly; and they boast that they are going to reform the Church by
these ravings! The question is no longer one of the old error which
claimed for human nature a sort of right to the supernatural. It has gone
far beyond that, and has reached the point when it is affirmed that our
most holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated from nature
spontaneously and of itself. Nothing assuredly could be more utterly
destructive of the whole supernatural order. For this reason the Vatican
Council most justly decreed: "If anyone says that man cannot be raised by
God to a knowledge and perfection which surpasses nature, but that he can
and should, by his own efforts and by a constant development, attain
finally to the possession of all truth and good, let him be anathema."[7]

11. So far, Venerable Brethren, there has been no mention of the
intellect. It also, according to the teaching of the Modernists, has its
part in the act of faith. And it is of importance to see how. In that
sense of which We have frequently spoken, since sense is not knowledge,
they say God, indeed, presents Himself to man, but in a manner so
confused and indistinct that He can hardly be perceived by the believer.
It is therefore necessary that a certain light should be cast upon this
sense so that God may clearly stand out in relief and be set apart from
it. This is the task of the intellect, whose office it is to reflect and
to analyze; and by means of it, man first transforms into mental pictures
the vital phenomena which arise within him, and then expresses them in
words. Hence the common saying of Modernists: that the religious man must
think his faith. The mind then, encountering this .sense, throws itself
upon it, and works in it after the manner of a painter who restores to
greater clearness the lines of a picture that have been dimmed with age.
The simile is that of one of the leaders of Modernism. The operation of
the mind in this work is a double one: first, by a natural and
spontaneous act it expresses its concept in a simple, popular statement;
then, on reflection and deeper consideration, or, as they say, by
elaborating its thought, it expresses the idea in secondary propositions,
which are derived from the first, but are more precise and distinct.
These secondary propositions, if they finally receive the approval of the
supreme magisterium of the Church, constitute dogma.

12. We have thus reached one of the principal points in the Modernist's
system, namely, the origin and the nature of dogma. For they place the
origin of dogma in those primitive and simple formulas, which, under a
certain aspect, are necessary to faith; for revelation, to be truly such,
requires the clear knowledge of God in the consciousness. But dogma
itself, they apparently hold, strictly consists in the secondary formulas
.

To ascertain the nature of dogma, we must first find the relation which
exists between the religious formulas and the religious sense. This will
be readily perceived by anyone who holds that these formulas have no
other purpose than to furnish the believer with a means of giving to
himself an account of his faith. These formulas therefore stand midway
between the believer and his faith; in their relation to the faith they
are the inadequate expression of its object, and are usually called
symbols; in their relation to the believer they are mere instruments.

Hence it is quite impossible to maintain that they absolutely contain the
truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth,
and so must be adapted to the religious sense in its relation to man; and
as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in
their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sense. But
the object of the religious sense, as something contained in the
absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now
another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes can avail
himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the formulas which we call
dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable
to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here
we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all
religion.

13. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This
is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and clearly flows from their
principles. For among the chief points of their teaching is the
following, which they deduce from the principle of vital immanence,
namely, that religious formulas if they are to be really religious and
not merely intellectual speculations, ought to be living and to live the
life of the religious sense. This is not to be understood to mean that
these formulas, especially if merely imaginative, were to be invented for
the religious sense. Their origin matters nothing, any more than their
number or quality. What is necessary is that the religious sense--with
some modification when needful-- should vitally assimilate them. In other
words, it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted and
sanctioned by the heart; and similarly the subsequent work from which are
brought forth the .secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of
the heart. Hence it comes that these formulas, in order to be living,
should be, and should remain, adapted to the faith and to him who
believes. Wherefore, if for any reason this adaptation should cease to
exist, they lose their first meaning and accordingly need to be changed.
In view of the fact that the character and lot of dogmatic formulas are
so unstable, it is no wonder that Modernists should regard them so
lightly and in such open disrespect, and have no consideration or praise
for anything but the religious sense and for the religious life. In this
way, with consummate audacity, they criticize the Church, as having
strayed from the true path by failing to distinguish between the
religious and moral sense of formulas and their surface meaning, and by
clinging vainly and tenaciously to meaningless formulas, while religion
itself is allowed to go to ruin. "Blind'- they are, and "leaders of the
blind" puffed up with the proud name of science, they have reached that
pitch of folly at which they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the
true meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which "they are
seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty,
thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but
despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other and vain,
futile, uncertain doctrines, unapproved by the Church, on which, in the
height of their vanity, they think they can base and maintain truth
itself."[8]

14. Thus far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist as a
philosopher. Now if We proceed to consider him as a believer, and seek to
know how the believer, according to Modernism, is marked off from the
philosopher, it must be observed that, although the philosopher
recognizes the reality of the divine as the object of faith, still this
reality is not to be found by him but in the heart of the believer, as an
object of feeling and affirmation, and therefore confined within the
sphere of phenomena; but the question as to whether in itself it exists
outside that feeling and affirmation is one which the philosopher passes
over and neglects. For the Modernist believer, on the contrary, it is an
established and certain fact that the reality of the divine does really
exist in itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it.
If you ask on what foundation this assertion of the believer rests, he
answers: In the personal experience of the individual. On this head the
Modernists differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the views of
the Protestants and pseudo-mystics. The following is their manner of
stating the question: In the religious sense one must recognize a kind of
intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the
reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion of God's existence and His
action both within and without man as far to exceed any scientific
conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience,
and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If this
experience is denied by some, like the Rationalists, they say that this
arises from the fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in
the moral state necessary to produce it. It is this experience which
makes the person who acquires it to be properly and truly a believer.

How far this position is removed from that of Catholic teaching! We have
already seen how its fallacies have been condemned by the Vatican
Council. Later on, we shall see how these errors, combined with those
which we have already mentioned, open wide the way to Atheism. Here it is
well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with
that of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to
be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being found in any
religion? In fact, that they are so is maintained by not a few. On what
grounds can Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a
follower of Islam? Will they claim a monopoly of true experiences for
Catholics alone? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain,
some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true. That they
cannot feel otherwise is obvious. For on what ground, according to their
theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever?
Certainly it would be either on account of the falsity of the religious
.sense or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the
mind. Now the religious sense, although it maybe more perfect or less
perfect, is always one and the same; and the intellectual formula, in
order to be true, has but to respond to the religious sense and to the
believer, whatever be the intellectual capacity of the latter. In the
conflict between different religions, the most that Modernists can
maintain is that the Catholic has more truth because it is more vivid,
and that it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it
corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find
it unreasonable that these consequences flow from the premises. But what
is most amazing is that there are Catholics and priests, who, We would
fain believe, abhor such enormities, and yet act as if they fully
approved of them. For they lavish such praise and bestow such public
honor on the teachers of these errors as to convey the belief that their
admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not
devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the sake of the errors which
these persons openly profess and which they do all in their power to
propagate.

15. There is yet another element in this part of their teaching which is
absolutely contrary to Catholic truth. For what is laid down as to
experience is also applied with destructive effect to tradition, which
has always been maintained by the Catholic Church. Tradition, as
understood by the Modernists, is a communication with others of an
original experience, through preaching by means of the intellectual
formula. To this formula, in addition to its representative value they
attribute a species of suggestive efficacy which acts firstly in the
believer by stimulating the religious sense, should it happen to have
grown sluggish, and by renewing the experience once acquired, and
secondly, in those who do not yet believe by awakening in them for the
first time the religious sense and producing the experience. In this way
is religious experience spread abroad among the nations; and not merely
among contemporaries by preaching, but among future generations both by
books and by oral transmission from one to another. Sometimes this
communication of religious experience takes root and thrives, at other
times it withers at once and dies. For the Modernists, to live is a proof
of truth, since for them life and truth are one and the same thing. Thus
we are once more led to infer that all existing religions are equally
true, for otherwise they would not survive.

16. We have proceeded sufficiently far, Venerable Brethren, to have
before us enough, and more than enough, to enable us to see what are the
relations which Modernists establish between faith and
science--including, as they are wont to do under that name, history. And
in the first place it is to be held that the object-matter of the one is
quite extraneous to and separate from the object-matter of the other. For
faith occupies itself solely with something which science declares to be
for it unknowable. Hence each has a separate scope assigned to it:
science is entirely concerned with phenomena, into which faith does not
at all enter; faith, on the contrary, concerns itself with the divine,
which is entirely unknown to science. Thus it is contended that there can
never be any dissension between faith and science, for if each keeps on
its own ground they can never meet and therefore never can be in
contradiction. And if it be objected that in the visible world there are
some things which appertain to faith, such as the human life of Christ,
the Modernists reply by denying this. For though such things come within
the category of phenomena, still in as far as they are lived by faith and
in the way already described have been by faith transfigured and
disfigured, they have been removed from the world of sense and
transferred into material for the divine. Hence should it be further
asked whether Christ has wrought real miracles, and made real prophecies,
whether He rose truly from the dead and ascended into Heaven, the answer
of agnostic science will be in the negative and the answer of faith in
the affirmative yet there will not be, on that account, any conflict
between them. For it will be denied by the philosopher as a philosopher
speaking to philosophers and considering Christ only in historical
reality; and it will be affirmed by the believer as a believer speaking
to believers and considering the life of Christ as lived again by the
faith and in the faith.

17. It would be a great mistake, nevertheless, to suppose that, according
to these theories, one is allowed to believe that faith and science are
entirely independent of each other. On the side of science that is indeed
quite true and correct, but it is quite otherwise with regard to faith,
which is subject to science, not on one but on three grounds. For in the
first place it must be observed that in every religious fact, when one
takes away the divine reality and the experience of it which the believer
possesses, everything else, and especially the religious formulas,
belongs to the sphere of phenomena and therefore falls under the control
of science. Let the believer go out of the world if he will, but so long
as he remains in it, whether he like it or not, he cannot escape from the
laws, the observation, the judgments of science and of history. Further,
although it is contended that God is the object of faith alone, the
statement refers only to the divine reality, not to the idea of God. The
latter also is subject to science which, while it philosophizes in what
is called the logical order, soars also to the absolute and the ideal. It
is therefore the right of philosophy and of science to form its knowledge
concerning the idea of God, to direct it in its evolution and to purify
it of any extraneous elements which may have entered into it. Hence we
have the Modernist axiom that the religious evolution ought to be brought
into accord with the moral and intellectual, or as one whom they regard
as their leader has expressed it, ought to be subject to it. Finally, man
does not suffer a dualism to exist in himself, and the believer therefore
feels within him an impelling need so to harmonize faith with science
that it may never oppose the general conception which science sets forth
concerning the universe.

Thus it is evident that science is to be entirely independent of faith,
while on the other hand, and notwithstanding that they are supposed to be
strangers to each other, faith is made subject to science. All this,
Venerable Brethren, is in formal opposition to the teachings of Our
predecessor, Pius IX, where he lays it down that: "In matters of religion
it is the duty of philosophy not to command but to serve, not to
prescribe what is to be believed, but to embrace what is to be believed
with reasonable obedience, not to scrutinize the depths of the mysteries
of God, but to venerate them devoutly and humbly."[9]

The Modernists completely invert the parts, and of them may be applied
the words which another of Our predecessors Gregory IX, addressed to some
theologians of his time: "Some among you, puffed up like bladders with
the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries
fixed by the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the sacred text...to the
philosophical teaching of the rationalists, not for the profit of their
hearer but to make a show of science...these men, led away by various and
strange doctrines, turn the head into the tail and force the queen to
serve the handmaid."[10]

18. This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of
Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their
writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines
which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to
regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done
deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their
opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their
books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic,
but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which
might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history
they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the
pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history
they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they
catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they
draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and
pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when
they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle
that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror
in treading in the footsteps of Luther[11] and are wont to display a
manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the
Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they
be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of
their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject
to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground
that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the
opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this
purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new
theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers.

19. At this point, Venerable Brethren, the way is opened for us to
consider the Modernists in the theological arena-- a difficult task, yet
one that may be disposed of briefly. It is a question of effecting the
conciliation of faith with science, but always by making the one subject
to the other. In this matter the Modernist theologian takes exactly the
same principles which we have seen employed by the Modernist philosopher
--the principles of immanence and symbolism--and applies them to the
believer. The process is an extremely simple one. The philosopher has
declared: The principle of faith is immanent; the believer has added:
This principle is God; and the theologian draws the conclusion: God is
immanent in man. Thus we have theological immanence. So, too, the
philosopher regards it as certain that the representations of the object
of faith are merely symbolical; the believer has likewise affirmed that
the object of faith is God in himself; and the theologian proceeds to
affirm that: The representations of the divine reality are symbolical.
And thus we have theological symbolism. These errors are truly of the
gravest kind and the pernicious character of both will be seen clearly
from an examination of their consequences. For, to begin with symbolism,
since symbols are but symbols in regard to their objects and only
instruments in regard to the believer, it is necessary first of all,
according to the teachings of the Modernists, that the believer does not
lay too much stress on the formula, as formula, but avail himself of it
only for the purpose of uniting himself to the absolute truth which the
formula at once reveals and conceals, that is to say, endeavors to
express but without ever succeeding in doing so. They would also have the
believer make use of the formulas only in as far as they are helpful to
him, for they are given to be a help and not a hindrance; with proper
regard, however, for the social respect due to formulas which the public
magisterium has deemed suitable for expressing the common consciousness
until such time as the same magisterium shall provide otherwise.
Concerning immanence it is not easy to determine what Modernists
precisely mean by it, for their own opinions on the subject vary. Some
understand it in the sense that God working in man is more intimately
present in him than man is even in himself; and this conception, if
properly understood, is irreproachable. Others hold that the divine
action is one with the action of nature, as the action of the first cause
is one with the action of the secondary cause; and this would destroy the
supernatural order. Others, finally, explain it in a way which savors of
pantheism, and this, in truth, is the sense which best fits in with the
rest of their doctrines.

20. With this principle of immanence is connected another which may be
called the principle of divine permanence. It differs from the first in
much the same way as the private experience differs from the experience
transmitted by tradition. An example illustrating what is meant will be
found in the Church and the sacraments. The Church and the sacraments
according to the Modernists, are not to be regarded as having been
instituted by Christ Himself. This is barred by agnosticism, which
recognizes in Christ nothing more than a man whose religious
consciousness has been, like that of all men, formed by degrees; it is
also barred by the law of immanence, which rejects what they call
external application; it is further barred by the law of evolution, which
requires, for the development of the germs, time and a certain series of
circumstances; it is finally, barred by history, which shows that such in
fact has been the course of things. Still it is to he held that both
Church and sacraments have been founded mediately by Christ. But how? In
this way: All Christian consciences were, they affirm, in a manner
virtually included in the conscience of Christ as the plant is included
in the seed. But as the branches live the life of the seed, so, too, all
Christians are to be said to live the life of Christ. But the life of
Christ, according to faith, is divine, and so, too, is the life of
Christians. And if this life produced, in the course of ages, both the
Church and the sacraments, it is quite right to say that their origin is
from Christ and is divine. In the same way they make out that the Holy
Scriptures and the dogmas are divine. And in this, the Modernist theology
may be said to reach its completion. A slender provision, in truth, but
more than enough for the theologian who professes that the conclusions of
science, whatever they may be, must always be accepted! No one will have
any difficulty in making the application of these theories to the other
points with which We propose to deal.

21. Thus far We have touched upon the origin and nature of faith. But as
faith has many branches, and chief among them the Church, dogma, worship,
devotions, the Books which we call "sacred," it concerns us to know what
the Modernists teach concerning them. To begin with dogma, We have
already indicated its origin and nature. Dogma is born of a sort of
impulse or necessity by virtue of which the believer elaborates his
thought so as to render it clearer to his own conscience and that of
others. This elaboration consists entirely in the process of
investigating and refining the primitive mental formula, not indeed in
itself and according to any logical explanation, but according to
circumstances, or vitally as the Modernists somewhat less intelligibly
describe it. Hence it happens that around this primitive formula
secondary formulas, as We have already indicated, gradually continue to
be formed, and these subsequently grouped into one body, or one doctrinal
construction and further sanctioned by the public magisterium as
responding to the common consciousness, are called dogma. Dogma is to be
carefully distinguished from the speculations of theologians which,
although not alive with the life of dogma, are not without their utility
as serving both to harmonize religion with science and to remove
opposition between them, and to illumine and defend religion from
without, and it may be even to prepare the matter for future dogma.
Concerning worship there would not be much to be said, were it not that
under this head are comprised the sacraments, concerning which the
Modernist errors are of the most serious character. For them the
sacraments are the resultant of a double impulse or need--for, as we have
seen, everything in their system is explained by inner impulses or
necessities. The first need is that of giving some sensible manifestation
to religion; the second is that of expressing it, which could not be done
without some sensible form and consecrating acts, and these are called
sacraments. But for the Modernists, sacraments are bare symbols or signs,
though not devoid of a certain efficacy--an efficacy, they tell us, like
that of certain phrases vulgarly described as having caught the popular
ear, inasmuch as they have the power of putting certain leading ideas
into circulation, and of making a marked impression upon the mind. What
the phrases are to the ideas, that the sacraments are to the religious
sense, that and nothing more. The Modernists would express their mind
more clearly were they to affirm that the sacraments are instituted
solely to foster the faith but this is condemned by the Council of Trent:
If anyone says that these sacraments are instituted solely to foster the
faith, let him be anathema.[12]

22. We have already touched upon the nature and origin of the Sacred
Books. According to the principles of the Modernists they may be rightly
described as a summary of experiences, not indeed of the kind that may
now and again come to anybody, but those extraordinary and striking
experiences which are the possession of every religion. And this is
precisely what they teach about our books of the Old and New Testament.
But to suit their own theories they note with remarkable ingenuity that,
although experience is something belonging to the present, still it may
draw its material in like manner from the past and the future inasmuch as
the believer by memory lives the past over again after the manner of the
present, and lives the future already by anticipation. This explains how
it is that the historical and apocalyptic books are included among the
Sacred Writings. God does indeed speak in these books through the medium
of the believer, but according to Modernist theology, only by immanence
and vital permanence. We may ask, what then becomes of inspiration?
Inspiration, they reply, is in nowise distinguished from that impulse
which stimulates the believer to reveal the faith that is in him by words
of writing, except perhaps by its vehemence. It is something like that
which happens in poetical inspiration, of which it has been said: There
is a God in us, and when he stirreth he sets us afire. It is in this
sense that God is said to be the origin of the inspiration of the Sacred
Books. The Modernists moreover affirm concerning this inspiration, that
there is nothing in the Sacred Books which is devoid of it. In this
respect some might be disposed to consider them as more orthodox than
certain writers in recent times who somewhat restrict inspiration, as,
for instance, in what have been put forward as so-called tacit citations.
But in all this we have mere verbal conjuring. For if we take the Bible,
according to the standards of agnosticism, namely, as a human work, made
by men for men, albeit the theologian is allowed to proclaim that it is
divine by immanence, what room is there left in it for inspiration? The
Modernists assert a general inspiration of the Sacred Books, but they
admit no inspiration in the Catholic sense.

23. A wider field for comment is opened when we come to what the
Modernist school has imagined to be the nature of the Church. They begin
with the supposition that the Church has its birth in a double need;
first, the need of the individual believer to communicate his faith to
others, especially if he has had some original and special experience,
and secondly, when the faith has become common to many, the need of the
collectivity to form itself into a society and to guard, promote, and
propagate the common good. What, then, is the Church? It is the product
of the collective conscience, that is to say, of the association of
individual consciences which, by virtue of the principle of vital
permanence, depend all on one first believer, who for Catholics is
Christ. Now every society needs a directing authority to guide its
members towards the common end, to foster prudently the elements of
cohesion, which in a religious society are doctrine and worship. Hence
the triple authority in the Catholic Church, disciplinary, dogmatic,
liturgical. The nature of this authority is to be gathered from its
origin, and its rights and duties from its nature. In past times it was a
common error that authority came to the Church from without, that is to
say directly from God; and it was then rightly held to be autocratic. But
this conception has now grown obsolete. For in the same way as the Church
is a vital emanation of the collectivity of consciences, so too authority
emanates vitally from the Church itself. Authority, therefore, like the
Church, has its origin in the religious conscience, and, that being so,
is subject to it. Should it disown this dependence it becomes a tyranny.
For we are living in an age when the sense of liberty has reached its
highest development. In the civil order the public conscience has
introduced popular government. Now there is in man only one conscience,
just as there is only one life. It is for the ecclesiastical authority,
therefore, to adopt a democratic form, unless it wishes to provoke and
foment an intestine conflict in the consciences of mankind. The penalty
of refusal is disaster. For it is madness to think that the sentiment of
liberty, as it now obtains, can recede. Were it forcibly pent up and held
in bonds, the more terrible would be its outburst, sweeping away at once
both Church and religion. Such is the situation in the minds of the
Modernists, and their one great anxiety is, in consequence, to find a way
of conciliation between the authority of the Church and the liberty of
the believers.

24. But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come
to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with
those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by
herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must
necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the
Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and
determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the
Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this
matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith,
though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in
the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and
science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their
objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of
their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is
temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the
spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the
Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church
was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the
author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated
alike by philosophers and historians. The state must, therefore, be
separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every
Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the
duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without
troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any
heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders--nay, even in spite of its
rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any
line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of
authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might.
Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have
been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic
Constitution Auctorem fidei.[13]

25. But it is not enough for the Modernist school that the State should
be separated from the Church. For as faith is to be subordinated to
science as far as phenomenal elements are concerned, so too in temporal
matters the Church must be subject to the State. This, indeed, Modernists
may not yet say openly, but they are forced by the logic of their
position to admit it. For granted the principle that in temporal matters
the State possesses the sole power, it will follow that when the
believer, not satisfied with merely internal acts of religion, proceeds
to external acts--such for instance as the reception or administration of
the sacraments--these will fall under the control of the State. What will
then become of ecclesiastical authority, which can only be exercised by
external acts? Obviously it will be completely under the dominion of the
State. It is this inevitable consequence which urges many among liberal
Protestants to reject all external worship--nay, all external religious
fellowship, and leads them to advocate what they call individual
religion. If the Modernists have not yet openly proceeded so far, they
ask the Church in the meanwhile to follow of her own accord in the
direction in which they urge her and to adapt herself to the forms of the
State. Such are their ideas about disciplinary authority. But much more
evil and pernicious are their opinions on doctrinal and dogmatic
authority. The following is their conception of the magisterium of the
Church: No religious society, they say, can be a real unit unless the
religious conscience of its members be one, and also the formula which
they adopt. But this double unity requires a kind of common mind whose
office is to find and determine the formula that corresponds best with
the common conscience; and it must have, moreover, an authority
sufficient to enable it to impose on the community the formula which has
been decided upon. From the combination and, as it were, fusion of these
two elements, the common mind which draws up the formula and the
authority which imposes it, arises, according to the Modernists, the
notion of the ecclesiastical magisterium. And, as this magisterium
springs, in its last analysis, from the individual consciences and
possesses its mandate of public utility for their benefit, it necessarily
follows that the ecclesiastical magisterium must be dependent upon them,
and should therefore be made to bow to the popular ideals. To prevent
individual consciences from expressing freely and openly the impulses
they feel, to hinder criticism from urging forward dogma in the path of
its necessary evolution, is not a legitimate use but an abuse of a power
given for the public weal. So too a due method and measure must be
observed in the exercise of authority. To condemn and proscribe a work
without the knowledge of the author, without hearing his explanations,
without discussion, is something approaching to tyranny. And here again
it is a question of finding a way of reconciling the full rights of
authority on the one hand and those of liberty on the other. In the
meantime the proper course for the Catholic will be to proclaim publicly
his profound respect for authority, while never ceasing to follow his own
judgment. Their general direction for the Church is as follows: that the
ecclesiastical authority, since its end is entirely spiritual, should
strip itself of that external pomp which adorns it in the eyes of the
public. In this, they forget that while religion is for the soul, it is
not exclusively for the soul, and that the honor paid to authority is
reflected back on Christ who instituted it.

26. To conclude this whole question of faith and its various branches, we
have still to consider, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to
say about the development of the one and the other. First of all they lay
down the general principle that in a living religion everything is
subject to change, and must in fact be changed. In this way they pass to
what is practically their principal doctrine, namely, evolution. To the
laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death--dogma,
Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself. The
enunciation of this principle will not be a matter of surprise to anyone
who bears in mind what the Modernists have had to say about each of these
subjects. Having laid down this law of evolution, the Modernists
themselves teach us how it operates. And first, with regard to faith. The
primitive form of faith, they tell us, was rudimentary and common to all
men alike, for it had its origin in human nature and human life. Vital
evolution brought with it progress, not by the accretion of new and
purely adventitious forms from without, but by an increasing perfusion of
the religious sense into the conscience. The progress was of two kinds:
negative, by the elimination of all extraneous elements, such, for
example, as those derived from the family or nationality; and positive,
by that intellectual and moral refining of man, by means of which the
idea of the divine became fuller and clearer, while the religious sense
became more acute. For the progress of faith the same causes are to be
assigned as those which are adduced above to explain its origin. But to
them must be added those extraordinary men whom we call prophets--of whom
Christ was the greatest-- both because in their lives and their words
there was something mysterious which faith attributed to the divinity,
and because it fell to their lot to have new and original experiences
fully in harmony with the religious needs of their time. The progress of
dogma is due chiefly to the fact that obstacles to the faith have to be
surmounted, enemies have to be vanquished, and objections have to be
refuted. Add to this a perpetual striving to penetrate ever more
profoundly into those things which are contained in the mysteries of
faith. Thus, putting aside other examples, it is found to have happened
in the case of Christ: in Him that divine something which faith
recognized in Him was slowly and gradually expanded in such a way that He
was at last held to be God. The chief stimulus of the evolution of
worship consists in the need of accommodation to the manners and customs
of peoples, as well as the need of availing itself of the value which
certain acts have acquired by usage. Finally, evolution in the Church
itself is fed by the need of adapting itself to historical conditions and
of harmonizing itself with existing forms of society. Such is their view
with regard to each. And here, before proceeding further, We wish to draw
attention to this whole theory of necessities or needs, for beyond all
that we have seen, it is, as it were, the base and foundation of that
famous method which they describe as historical.

27. Although evolution is urged on by needs or necessities, yet, if
controlled by these alone, it would easily overstep the boundaries of
tradition, and thus, separated from its primitive vital principle, would
make for ruin instead of progress. Hence, by those who study more closely
the ideas of the Modernists, evolution is described as a resultant from
the conflict of two forces, one of them tending towards progress, the
other towards conservation. The conserving force exists in the Church and
is found in tradition; tradition is represented by religious authority,
and this both by right and in fact. By right, for it is in the very
nature of authority to protect tradition: and in fact, since authority,
raised as it is above the contingencies of life, feels hardly, or not at
all, the spurs of progress. The progressive force, on the contrary, which
responds to the inner needs, lies in the individual consciences and works
in them--especially in such of them as are in more close and intimate
contact with life. Already we observe, Venerable Brethren, the
introduction of that most pernicious doctrine which would make of the
laity the factor of progress in the Church. Now it is by a species of
covenant and compromise between these two forces of conservation and
progress, that is to say between authority and individual consciences,
that changes and advances take place. The individual consciences, or some
of them, act on the collective conscience, which brings pressure to bear
on the depositories of authority to make terms and to keep to them.

With all this in mind, one understands how it is that the Modernists
express astonishment when they are reprimanded or punished. What is
imputed to them as a fault they regard as a sacred duty. They understand
the needs of consciences better than anyone else, since they come into
closer touch with them than does the ecclesiastical authority. Nay, they
embody them, so to speak, in themselves. Hence, for them to speak and to
write publicly is a bounden duty. Let authority rebuke them if it
pleases--they have their own conscience on their side and an intimate
experience which tells them with certainty that what they deserve is not
blame but praise. Then they reflect that, after all, there is no progress
without a battle and no battle without its victims; and victims they are
willing to be like the prophets and Christ Himself. They have no
bitterness in their hearts against the authority which uses them roughly,
for after all they readily admit that it is only doing its duty as
authority. Their sole grief is that it remains deaf to their warnings,
for in this way it impedes the progress of souls, but the hour will most
surely come when further delay will be impossible, for if the laws of
evolution may be checked for a while they cannot be finally evaded. And
thus they go their way, reprimands and condemnations not withstanding,
masking an incredible audacity under a mock semblance of humility. While
they make a pretense of bowing their heads, their minds and hands are
more boldly intent than ever on carrying out their purposes. And this
policy they follow willingly and wittingly, both because it is part of
their system that authority is to be stimulated but not dethroned, and
because it is necessary for them to remain within the ranks of the Church
in order that they may gradually transform the collective conscience. And
in saying this, they fail to perceive that they are avowing that the
collective conscience is not with them, and that they have no right to
claim to be its interpreters.

28. It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as
authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing
immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in
their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote:
"These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies,
and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the
Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of
man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by
human efforts."[14] On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular,
the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned
in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms:
"Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and
indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human
reason";[15] and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council:
"The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed
to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a
philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of
Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also
that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our
Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be
abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the
truth."[16] Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the
faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and
maintained. For the same Council continues: "Let intelligence and science
and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in
individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church,
throughout the ages and the centuries--but only in its own kind, that is,
according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation."[17]

29. We have studied the Modernist as philosopher, believer, and
theologian. It now remains for us to consider him as historian, critic,
apologist, and reformer.

30. Some Modernists, devoted to historical studies, seem to be deeply
anxious not to be taken for philosophers. About philosophy they profess
to know nothing whatever, and in this they display remarkable astuteness,
for they are particularly desirous not to be suspected of any
prepossession in favor of philosophical theories which would lay them
open to the charge of not being, as they call it, objective. And yet the
truth is that their history and their criticism are saturated with their
philosophy, and that their historico-critical conclusions are the natural
outcome of their philosophical principles. This will be patent to anyone
who reflects. Their three first laws are contained in those three
principles of their philosophy already dealt with: the principle of
agnosticism, the theorem of the transfiguration of things by faith, and
that other which may be called the principle of disfiguration. Let us see
what consequences flow from each of these. Agnosticism tells us that
history, like science, deals entirely with phenomena, and the consequence
is that God, and every intervention of God in human affairs, is to be
relegated to the domain of faith as belonging to it alone. Wherefore in
things where there is combined a double element, the divine and the
human, as, for example, in Christ, or the Church, or the sacraments, or
the many other objects of the same kind, a division and separation must
be made and the human element must he left to history while the divine
will he assigned to faith. Hence we have that distinction, so current
among the Modernists, between the Christ of history and the Christ of
faith; the Church of history and the Church of faith; the sacraments of
history and the sacraments of faith, and so in similar matters. Next we
find that the human element itself, which the historian has to work on,
as it appears in the documents, is to be considered as having been
transfigured by faith, that is to say, raised above its historical
conditions. It becomes necessary, therefore, to eliminate also the
accretions which faith has added, to relegate them to faith itself and to
the history of faith. Thus, when treating of Christ, the historian must
set aside all that surpasses man in his natural condition, according to
what psychology tells us of him, or according to what we gather from the
place and period of his existence. Finally, they require, by virtue of
the third principle, that even those things which are not outside the
sphere of history should pass through the sieve, excluding all and
relegating to faith everything which, in their judgment, is not in
harmony with what they call the logic of facts or not in character with
the persons of whom they are predicated. Thus, they will not allow that
Christ ever uttered those things which do not seem to be within the
capacity of the multitudes that listened to Him. Hence they delete from
His real history and transfer to faith all the allegories found in His
discourses. We may peradventure inquire on what principle they make these
divisions? Their reply is that they argue from the character of the man,
from his condition of life, from his education, from the complexus of the
circumstances under which the facts took place; in short, if We
understand them aright, on a principle which in the last analysis is
merely .subjective. Their method is to put themselves into the position
and person of Christ, and then to attribute to Him what they would have
done under like circumstances. In this way, absolutely a priori and
acting on philosophical principles which they hold but which they profess
to ignore, they proclaim that Christ, according to what they call His
real history, was not God and never did anything divine, and that as man
He did and said only what they, judging from the time in which He lived,
consider that He ought to have said or done.

31. As history takes its conclusions from philosophy, so too criticism
takes its conclusions from history. The critic on the data furnished him
by the historian, makes two parts of all his documents. Those that remain
after the triple elimination above described go to form the real history;
the rest is attributed to the history of the faith or, as it is styled,
to internal history. For the Modernists distinguish very carefully
between these two kinds of history, and it is to be noted that they
oppose the history of the faith to real history precisely as real. Thus,
as we have already said, we have a twofold Christ: a real Christ, and a
Christ, the one of faith, who never really existed; a Christ who has
lived at a given time and in a given place, and a Christ who never lived
outside the pious meditations of the believer--the Christ, for instance,
whom we find in the Gospel of St. John, which, according to them, is mere
meditation from beginning to end.

32. But the dominion of philosophy over history does not end here. Given
that division, of which We have spoken, of the documents into two parts,
the philosopher steps in again with his dogma of vital immanence, and
shows how everything in the history of the Church is to be explained by
vital emanation. And since the cause or condition of every vital
emanation whatsoever is to be found in some need or want, it follows that
no fact can be regarded as antecedent to the need which produced
it--historically the fact must be posterior to the need. What, then, does
the historian do in view of this principle? He goes over his documents
again, whether they be contained in the Sacred Books or elsewhere, draws
up from them his list of the particular needs of the Church, whether
relating to dogma, or liturgy, or other matters which are found in the
Church thus related, and then he hands his list over to the critic. The
critic takes in hand the documents dealing with the history of faith and
distributes them, period by period, so that they correspond exactly with
the list of needs, always guided by the principle that the narration must
follow the facts, as the facts follow the needs. It may at times happen
that some parts of the Sacred Scriptures, such as the Epistles,
themselves constitute the fact created by the need. Even so, the rule
holds that the age of any document can only be determined by the age in
which each need has manifested itself in the Church. Further, a
distinction must be made between the beginning of a fact and its
development, for what is born in one day requires time for growth. Hence
the critic must once more go over his documents, ranged as they are
through the different ages, and divide them again into two parts,
separating those that regard the origin of the facts from those that deal
with their development, and these he must again arrange according to
their periods.

33. Then the philosopher must come in again to enjoin upon the historian
the obligation of following in all his studies the precepts and laws of
evolution. It is next for the historian to scrutinize his documents once
more, to examine carefully the circumstances and conditions affecting the
Church during the different periods, the conserving force she has put
forth, the needs both internal and external that have stimulated her to
progress, the obstacles she has had to encounter, in a word, everything
that helps to determine the manner in which the laws of evolution have
been fulfilled in her. This done, he finishes his work by drawing up a
history of the development in its broad lines. The critic follows and
fits in the rest of the documents. He sets himself to write. The history
is finished. Now We ask here: Who is the author of this history? The
historian? The critic? Assuredly neither of these but the philosopher.
From beginning to end everything in it is a priori, and an apriorism that
reeks of heresy. These men are certainly to be pitied, of whom the
Apostle might well say: "They became vain in their thoughts...professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools."[18] At the same time, they
excite resentment when they accuse the Church of arranging and confusing
the texts after her own fashion, and for the needs of her cause. In this
they are accusing the Church of something for which their own conscience
plainly reproaches them.

34. The result of this dismembering of the records, and this partition of
them throughout the centuries is naturally that the Scriptures can no
longer be attributed to the authors whose names they bear. The Modernists
have no hesitation in affirming generally that these books, and
especially the Pentateuch and the first three Gospels, have been
gradually formed from a primitive brief narration, by additions, by
interpolations of theological or allegorical interpretations, or parts
introduced only for the purpose of joining different passages together.
This means, to put it briefly and clearly, that in the Sacred Books we
must admit a vital evolution, springing from and corresponding with the
evolution of faith. The traces of this evolution, they tell us, are so
visible in the books that one might almost write a history of it. Indeed,
this history they actually do write, and with such an easy assurance that
one might believe them to have seen with their own eyes the writers at
work through the ages amplifying the Sacred Books. To aid them in this
they call to their assistance that branch of criticism which they call
textual, and labor to show that such a fact or such a phrase is not in
its right place, adducing other arguments of the same kind. They seem, in
fact, to have constructed for themselves certain types of narration and
discourses, upon which they base their assured verdict as to whether a
thing is or is not out of place. Let him who can judge how far they are
qualified in this way to make such distinctions. To hear them descant of
their works on the Sacred Books, in which they have been able to discover
so much that is defective, one would imagine that before them nobody ever
even turned over the pages of Scripture. The truth is that a whole
multitude of Doctors, far superior to them in genius, in erudition, in
sanctity, have sifted the Sacred Books in every way, and so far from
finding in them anything blameworthy have thanked God more and more
heartily the more deeply they have gone into them, for His divine bounty
in having vouchsafed to speak thus to men. Unfortunately. these great
Doctors did not enjoy the same aids to study that are possessed by the
Modernists for they did not have for their rule and guide a philosophy
borrowed from the negation of God, and a criterion which consists of
themselves .

We believe, then, that We have set forth with sufficient clearness the
historical method of the Modernists. The philosopher leads the way, the
historian follows, and then in due order come the internal and textual
critics. And since it is characteristic of the primary cause to
communicate its virtue to causes which are secondary, it is quite clear
that the criticism with which We are concerned is not any kind of
criticism, but that which is rightly called agnostic, immanentist, and
evolutionist criticism. Hence anyone who adopts it and employs it makes
profession thereby of the errors contained in it, and places himself in
opposition to Catholic teaching. This being so, it is much a matter for
surprise that it should have found acceptance to such an extent among
certain Catholics. Two causes may be assigned for this: first, the close
alliance which the historians and critics of this school have formed
among themselves independent of all differences of nationality or
religion; second, their boundless effrontery by which, if one then makes
any utterance, the others applaud him in chorus, proclaiming that science
has made another step forward, while if an outsider should desire to
inspect the new discovery for himself, they form a coalition against him.
He who denies it is decried as one who is ignorant, while he who embraces
and defends it has all their praise. In this way they entrap not a few,
who, did they but realize what they are doing, would shrink back with
horror. The domineering overbearance of those who teach the errors, and
the thoughtless compliance of the more shallow minds who assent to them,
create a corrupted atmosphere which penetrates everywhere, and carries
infection with it. But let Us pass to the apologist.

35. The Modernist apologist depends in two ways on the philosopher.
First, indirectly, inasmuch as his subject-matter is history--history
dictated, as we have seen, by the philosopher; and, secondly, directly,
inasmuch as he takes both his doctrines and his conclusions from the
philosopher. Hence that common axiom of the Modernist school that in the
new apologetics controversies in religion must be determined by
psychological and historical research. The Modernist apologists, then,
enter the arena, proclaiming to the rationalists that, though they are
defending religion, they have no intention of employing the data of the
sacred books or the histories in current use in the Church, and written
upon the old lines, but real history composed on modern principles and
according to the modern method. In all this they assert that they are not
using an argumentum ad hominem, because they are really of the opinion
that the truth is to be found only in this kind of history. They feel
that it is not necessary for them to make profession of their own
sincerity in their writings. They are already known to and praised by the
rationalists as fighting under the same banner, and they not only plume
themselves on these encomiums, which would only provoke disgust in a real
Catholic, but use them as a counter-compensation to the reprimands of the
Church.

Let us see how the Modernist conducts his apologetics. The aim he sets
before himself is to make one who is still without faith attain that
experience of the Catholic religion which, according to the system, is
the sole basis of faith. There are two ways open to him, the objective
and the subjective. The first of them starts from agnosticism. It tends
to show that religion, and especially the Catholic religion, is endowed
with such vitality as to compel every psychologist and historian of good
faith to recognize that its history hides some element of the unknown. To
this end it is necessary to prove that the Catholic religion, as it
exists today, is that which was founded by Jesus Christ; that is to say,
that it is nothing else than the progressive development of the germ
which He brought into the world. Hence it is imperative first of all to
establish what this germ was, and this the Modernist claims to he able to
do by the following formula: Christ announced the coming of the kingdom
of God, which was to be realized within a brief lapse of time and of
which He was to become the Messias, the divinely-given founder and ruler.
Then it must be shown how this germ, always immanent and permanent in the
Catholic religion, has gone on slowly developing in the course of
history, adapting itself successively to the different circumstances
through which it has passed, borrowing from them by vital assimilation
all the doctrinal, cultural, ecclesiastical forms that served its
purpose; whilst, on the other hand, it surmounted all obstacles,
vanquished all enemies, and survived all assaults and all combats. Anyone
who well and duly considers this mass of obstacles, adversaries, attacks,
combats, and the vitality and fecundity which the Church has shown
throughout them all, must admit that if the laws of evolution are visible
in her life they fail to explain the whole of her history--the unknown
rises forth from it and presents itself before Us. Thus do they argue,
not perceiving that their determination of the primitive germ is only an
a priori assumption of agnostic and evolutionist philosophy, and that the
germ itself has been gratuitously defined so that it may fit in with
their contention.

36. But while they endeavor by this line of reasoning to prove and plead
for the Catholic religion, these new apologists are more than willing to
grant and to recognize that there are in it many things which are
repulsive. Nay, they admit openly, and with ill-concealed satisfaction,
that they have found that even its dogma is not exempt from errors and
contradictions. They add also that this is not only excusable
but--curiously enough--that it is even right and proper. In the Sacred
Books there are many passages referring to science or history where,
according to them, manifest errors are to he found. But, they say, the
subject of these books is not science or history, but only religion and
morals. In them history and science serve only as a species of covering
to enable the religious and moral experiences wrapped Up in them to
penetrate more readily among the masses. The masses understood science
and history as they are expressed in these books, and it is clear that
the expression of science and history in a more perfect form would have
proved not so much a help as a hindrance. Moreover, they add, the Sacred
Books, being essentially religious, are necessarily quick with life. Now
life has its own truths and its own logic--quite different from rational
truth and rational logic, belonging as they do to a different order,
viz., truth of adaptation and of proportion both with what they call the
medium in which it lives and with the end for which it lives. Finally,
the Modernists, losing all sense of control, go so far as to proclaim as
true and legitimate whatever is explained by life.

We, Venerable Brethren, for whom there is but one and only one truth, and
who hold that the Sacred Books, "written under the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost, have God for their author"[19] declare that this is
equivalent to attributing to God Himself the lie of utility or officious
lie, and We say with St. Augustine: "In an authority so high, admit but
one officious lie, and there will not remain a single passage of those
apparently difficult to practice or to believe, which on the same most
pernicious rule may not be explained as a lie uttered by the author
willfully and to serve a purpose."[20] And thus it will come about, the
holy Doctor continues, that "everybody will believe and refuse to believe
what he likes or dislikes in them," namely, the Scriptures. But the
Modernists pursue their way eagerly. They grant also that certain
arguments adduced in the Sacred Books in proof of a given doctrine, like
those, for example, which are based on the prophecies, have no rational
foundation to rest on. But they defend even these as artifices of
preaching, which are justified by life. More than that. They are ready to
admit, nay, to proclaim that Christ Himself manifestly erred in
determining the time when the coming of the Kingdom of God was to take
place; and they tell us that we must not be surprised at this since even
He Himself was subject to the laws of life! After this what is to become
of the dogmas of the Church? The dogmas bristle with flagrant
contradictions, but what does it matter since, apart from the fact that
vital logic accepts them, they are not repugnant to symbolical truth. Are
we not dealing with the infinite, and has not the infinite an infinite
variety of aspects? In short, to maintain and defend these theories they
do not hesitate to declare that the noblest homage that can be paid to
the Infinite is to make it the object of contradictory statements! But
when they justify even contradictions, what is it that they will refuse
to justify?

37. But it is not solely by objective arguments that the non-believer may
be disposed to faith. There are also those that are subjective, and for
this purpose the modernist apologists return to the doctrine of
immanence. They endeavor, in fact, to persuade their non-believer that
down in the very depths of his nature and his life lie hidden the need
and the desire for some religion, and this not a religion of any kind,
but the specific religion known as Catholicism, which, they say, is
absolutely postulated by the perfect development of life. And here again
We have grave reason to complain that there are Catholics who, while
rejecting immanence as a doctrine, employ it as a method of apologetics,
and who do this so imprudently that they seem to admit, not merely a
capacity and a suitability for the supernatural, such as has at all times
been emphasized, within due limits, by Catholic apologists, but that
there is in human nature a true and rigorous need for the supernatural
order. Truth to tell, it is only the moderate Modernists who make this
appeal to an exigency for the Catholic religion. As for the others, who
might he called integralists, they would show to the non-believer, as
hidden in his being, the very germ which Christ Himself had in His
consciousness, and which He transmitted to mankind. Such, Venerable
Brethren, is a summary description of the apologetic method of the
Modernists, in perfect harmony with their doctrines--methods and
doctrines replete with errors, made not for edification but for
destruction, not for the making of Catholics but for the seduction of
those who are Catholics into heresy; and tending to the utter subversion
of all religion.

38. It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as
reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great
and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all
Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They
wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical
seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the
history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the
young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited
to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology:
rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and
positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for
history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods
and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be
harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be
inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity
of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external
devotions is to he reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their
further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are
disposed to be more indulgent on this head. They cry out that
ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches,
but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist
that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the
modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in
ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of
the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much
concentrated should be decentralized The Roman Congregations and
especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified The
ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and
political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must
adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With
regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the
active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more
encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to their
primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they
should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, gladly
listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the
suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is there left in the
Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their
principles?

39. It may, perhaps, seem to some, Venerable Brethren, that We have dealt
at too great length on this exposition of the doctrines of the
Modernists. But it was necessary that We should do so, both in order to
meet their customary charge that We do not understand their ideas, and to
show that their system does not consist in scattered and unconnected
theories, but, as it were, in a closely connected whole, so that it is
not possible to admit one without admitting all. For this reason, too, We
have had to give to this exposition a somewhat didactic form, and not to
shrink from employing certain unwonted terms which the Modernists have
brought into use. And now with Our eyes fixed upon the whole system, no
one will be surprised that We should define it to be the synthesis of all
heresies. Undoubtedly, were anyone to attempt the task of collecting
together all the errors that have been broached against the faith and to
concentrate into one the sap and substance of them all, he could not
succeed in doing so better than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have
gone farther than this, for, as We have already intimated, their system
means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all
religion. Hence the rationalists are not wanting in their applause, and
the most frank and sincere among them congratulate themselves on having
found in the Modernists the most valuable of all allies.

Let us turn for a moment, Venerable Brethren, to that most disastrous
doctrine of agnosticism. By it every avenue to God on the side of the
intellect is barred to man, while a better way is supposed to be opened
from the side of a certain sense of the soul and action. But who does not
see how mistaken is such a contention? For the sense of the soul is the
response to the action of the thing which the intellect or the outward
senses set before it. Take away the intelligence, and man, already
inclined to follow the senses, becomes their slave. Doubly mistaken, from
another point of view, for all these fantasies of the religious sense
will never be able to destroy common sense, and common sense tells us
that emotion and everything that leads the heart captive proves a
hindrance instead of a help to the discovery of truth. We speak of truth
in itself--for that other purely subjective truth, the fruit of the
internal sense and action, if it serves its purpose for the play of
words, is of no benefit to the man who wants above all things to know
whether outside himself there is a God into whose hands he is one day to
fall. True, the Modernists call in experience to eke out their system,
but what does this experience add to that sense of the soul? Absolutely
nothing beyond a certain intensity and a proportionate deepening of the
conviction of the reality of the object. But these two will never make
the sense of the soul into anything but sense, nor will they alter its
nature, which is liable to deception when the intelligence is not there
to guide it; on the contrary, they but confirm and strengthen this
nature, for the more intense the sense is the more it is really sense.
And as we are here dealing with religious sense and the experience
involved in it, it is known to you, Venerable Brethren, how necessary in
such a matter is prudence, and the learning by which prudence is guided.
You know it from your own dealings with souls, and especially with souls
in whom sentiment predominates; you know it also from your reading of
works of ascetical theology--works for which the Modernists have but
little esteem, but which testify to a science and a solidity far greater
than theirs, and to a refinement and subtlety of observation far beyond
any which the Modernists take credit to themselves for possessing. It
seems to Us nothing short of madness, or at the least consummate temerity
to accept for true, and without investigation, these incomplete
experiences which are the vaunt of the Modernist. Let Us for a moment put
the question: If experiences have so much force and value in their
estimation, why do they not attach equal weight to the experience that so
many thousands of Catholics have that the Modernists are on the wrong
path? Is it that the Catholic experiences are the only ones which are
false and deceptive? The vast majority of mankind holds and always will
hold firmly that sense and experience alone, when not enlightened and
guided by reason, cannot reach to the knowledge of God. What, then,
remains but atheism and the absence of all religion? Certainly it is not
the doctrine of .symbolism that will save us from this. For if all the
intellectual elements, as they call them, of religion are nothing more
than mere symbols of God, will not the very name of God or of divine
personality be also a symbol, and if this be admitted, the personality of
God will become a matter of doubt and the gate will be opened to
pantheism? And to pantheism pure and simple that other doctrine of the
divine immanence leads directly. For this is the question which We ask:
Does or does not this immanence leave God distinct from man? If it does,
in what does it differ from the Catholic doctrine, and why does it reject
the doctrine of external revelation? If it does not, it is pantheism. Now
the doctrine of immanence in the Modernist acceptation holds and
professes that every phenomenon of conscience proceeds from man as man.
The rigorous conclusion from this is the identity of man with God, which
means pantheism. The distinction which Modernists make between science
and faith leads to the same conclusion. The object of science, they say,
is the reality of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary, is
the reality of the unknowable. Now, what makes the unknowable unknowable
is the fact that there is no proportion between its object and the
intellect--a defect of proportion which nothing whatever, even in the
doctrine of the Modernist, can suppress. Hence the unknowable remains and
will eternally remain unknowable to the believer as well as to the
philosopher. Therefore if any religion at all is possible, it can only be
the religion of an unknowable reality. And why this might not be that
soul of the universe, of which certain rationalists speak, is something
which certainly does not seem to Us apparent. These reasons suffice to
show superabundantly by how many roads Modernism leads to atheism and to
the annihilation of all religion. The error of Protestantism made the
first step on this path; that of Modernism makes the second; atheism
makes the next.

40. To penetrate still deeper into the meaning of Modernism and to find a
suitable remedy for so deep a sore, it behooves Us, Venerable Brethren,
to investigate the causes which have engendered it and which foster its
growth. That the proximate and immediate cause consists in an error of
the mind cannot be open to doubt. We recognize that the remote causes may
be reduced to two: curiosity and pride. Curiosity by itself, if not
prudently regulated, suffices to account for all errors. Such is the
opinion of Our predecessor, Gregory XVI, who wrote: "A lamentable
spectacle is that presented by the aberrations of human reason when it
yields to the spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the Apostle
it seeks to know beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying too
much on itself it thinks it can find the truth outside the Catholic
Church wherein truth is found without the slightest shadow of error."[21]

But it is pride which exercises an incomparably greater sway over the
soul to blind it and lead it into error, and pride sits in Modernism as
in its own house, finding sustenance everywhere in its doctrines and
lurking in its every aspect. It is pride which fills Modernists with that
self-assurance by which they consider themselves and pose as the rule for
all. It is pride which puffs them up with that vainglory which allows
them to regard themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes
them say, elated and inflated with presumption, "We are not as the rest
of men," and which, lest they should seem as other men, leads them to
embrace and to devise novelties even of the most absurd kind. It is pride
which rouses in them the spirit of disobedience and causes them to demand
a compromise between authority and liberty. It is owing to their pride
that they seek to be the reformers of others while they forget to reform
themselves, and that they are found to be utterly wanting in respect for
authority, even for the supreme authority. Truly there is no road which
leads so directly and so quickly to Modernism as pride. When a Catholic
layman or a priest forgets the precept of the Christian life which
obliges us to renounce ourselves if we would follow Christ and neglects
to tear pride from his heart, then it is he who most of all is a fully
ripe subject for the errors of Modernism. For this reason, Venerable
Brethren, it will be your first duty to resist such victims of pride, to
employ them only in the lowest and obscurest offices. The higher they try
to rise, the lower let them be placed, so that the lowliness of their
position may limit their power of causing damage. Examine most carefully
your young clerics by yourselves and by the directors of your seminaries,
and when you find the spirit of pride among them reject them without
compunction from the priesthood. Would to God that this had always been
done with the vigilance and constancy which were required!

41. If we pass on from the moral to the intellectual causes of Modernism,
the first and the chief which presents itself is ignorance. Yes, these
very Modernists who seek to be esteemed as Doctors of the Church, who
speak so loftily of modern philosophy and show such contempt for
scholasticism, have embraced the one with all its false glamour,
precisely because their ignorance of the other has left them without the
means of being able to recognize confusion of thought and to refute
sophistry. Their whole system, containing as it does errors so many and
so great, has been born of the union between faith and false philosophy.

42. Would that they had but displayed less zeal and energy in propagating
it! But such is their activity and such their unwearying labor on behalf
of their cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such
energy in endeavoring to ruin the Church when they might have been of
such service to her had their efforts been better directed. Their
artifices to delude men's minds are of two kinds, the first to remove
obstacles from their path, the second to devise and apply actively and
patiently every resource that can serve their purpose. They recognize
that the three chief difficulties which stand in their way are the
scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the
Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage
unrelenting war. Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the
weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or
both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion
for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and
there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he
begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method. Let the Modernists
and their admirers remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: "The
method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of
scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the
exigencies of our time or the progress of science."[22] They exercise all
their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the
character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority.
But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council
of Nicea, where it condemns those "who dare, after the impious fashion of
heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of
some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the
legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church"; nor that of the
declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: "We therefore
profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic
and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the
orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by everyone of those
divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church." Wherefore
the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the
profession of faith of the following declaration: "I most firmly admit
and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other
observances and constitutions of the Church."

The Modernists pass judgment on the holy Fathers of the Church even as
they do upon tradition. With consummate temerity they assure the public
that the Fathers, while personally most worthy of all veneration, were
entirely ignorant of history and criticism, for which they are only
excusable on account of the time in which they lived. Finally, the
Modernists try in every way to diminish and weaken the authority of the
ecclesiastical magisterium itself by sacrilegiously falsifying its
origin, character, and rights, and by freely repeating the calumnies of
its adversaries. To the entire band of Modernists may be applied those
words which Our predecessor sorrowfully wrote: "To bring contempt and
odium on the mystic Spouse of Christ, who is the true light, the children
of darkness have been wont to cast in her face before the world a stupid
calumny, and perverting the meaning and force of things and words, to
depict her as the friend of darkness and ignorance, and the enemy of
light, science, and progress."[23] This being so, Venerable Brethren,
there is little reason to wonder that the Modernists vent all their
bitterness and hatred on Catholics who zealously fight the battles of the
Church. There is no species of insult which they do not heap upon them,
but their usual course is to charge them with ignorance or obstinacy.
When an adversary rises up against them with an erudition and force that
renders them redoubtable, they seek to make a conspiracy of silence
around him to nullify the effects of his attack. This policy towards
Catholics is the more invidious in that they belaud with admiration which
knows no bounds the writers who range themselves on their side, hailing
their works, exuding novelty in every page, with a chorus of applause.
For them the scholarship of a writer is in direct proportion to the
recklessness of his attacks on antiquity, and of his efforts to undermine
tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium. When one of their number
falls under the condemnations of the Church the rest of them, to the
disgust of good Catholics, gather round him, loudly and publicly applaud
him, and hold him up in veneration as almost a martyr for truth. The
young, excited and confused by all this clamor of praise and abuse, some
of them afraid of being branded as ignorant, others ambitious to rank
among the learned, and both classes goaded internally by curiosity and
pride, not infrequently surrender and give themselves up to Modernism.

43. And here we have already some of the artifices employed by Modernists
to exploit their wares. What efforts do they not make to win new
recruits! They seize upon professorships in the seminaries and
universities, and gradually make of them chairs of pestilence. In sermons
from the pulpit they disseminate their doctrines, although possibly in
utterances which are veiled. In congresses they express their teachings
more openly. In their social gatherings they introduce them and commend
them to others. Under their own names and under pseudonyms they publish
numbers of books, newspapers, reviews, and sometimes one and the same
writer adopts a variety of pseudonyms to trap the incautious reader into
believing in a multitude of Modernist writers. In short, with feverish
activity they leave nothing untried in act, speech, and writing. And with
what result? We have to deplore the spectacle of many young men, once
full of promise and capable of rendering great services to the Church,
now gone astray. It is also a subject of grief to Us that many others
who, while they certainly do not go so far as the former, have yet been
so infected by breathing a poisoned atmosphere, as to think, speak, and
write with a degree of laxity which ill becomes a Catholic. They are to
be found among the laity, and in the ranks of the clergy, and they are
not wanting even in the last place where one might expect to meet them,
in religious communities If they treat of biblical questions, it is upon
Modernist principles; if they write history, they carefully, and with
ill-concealed satisfaction, drag into the light, on the plea of telling
the whole truth, everything that appears to cast a stain upon the Church.
Under the sway of certain a priori conceptions they destroy as far as
they can the pious traditions of the people, and bring into disrespect
certain relics highly venerable from their antiquity. They are possessed
by the empty desire of having their names upon the lips of the public,
and they know they would never succeed in this were they to say only what
has always been said by all men. Meanwhile it may be that they have
persuaded themselves that in all this they are really serving God and the
Church. In reality they only offend both, less perhaps by their works in
themselves than by the spirit in which they write, and by the
encouragement they thus give to the aims of the Modernists.

44. Against this host of grave errors, and its secret and open advance,
Our predecessor Leo XIII, of happy memory, worked strenuously, both in
his words and his acts, especially as regards the study of the Bible.
But, as we have seen, the Modernists are not easily deterred by such
weapons. With an affectation of great submission and respect, they
proceeded to twist the words of the Pontiff to their own sense, while
they described his action as directed against others than themselves.
Thus the evil has gone on increasing from day to day. We, therefore,
Venerable Brethren, have decided to suffer no longer delay, and to adopt
measures which are more efficacious. We exhort and conjure you to see to
it that in this most grave matter no one shall be in a position to say
that you have been in the slightest degree wanting in vigilance, zeal, or
firmness. And what We ask of you and expect of you, We ask and expect
also of all other pastors of souls, of all educators and professors of
clerics, and in a very special way of the superiors of religious
communities.

45. In the first place, with regard to studies, We will and strictly
ordain that scholastic philosophy be made the basis of the sacred
sciences. It goes without saying that "if anything is met with among the
scholastic doctors which may be regarded as something investigated with
an excess of subtlety, or taught without sufficient consideration;
anything which is not in keeping with the certain results of later times;
anything, in short, which is altogether destitute of probability, We have
no desire whatever to propose it for the imitation of present
generations."[24] And let it be clearly understood above all things that
when We prescribe scholastic philosophy We understand chiefly that which
the Angelic Doctor has bequeathed to us, and We, therefore, declare that
all the ordinances of Our predecessor on this subject continue fully in
force, and, as far as may be necessary, We do decree anew, and confirm,
and order that they shall be strictly observed by all. In seminaries
where they have been neglected it will be for the Bishops to exact and
require their observance in the future; and let this apply also to the
superiors of religious orders. Further, We admonish professors to bear
well in mind that they cannot set aside St. Thomas, especially in
metaphysical questions, without grave disadvantage.

46. On this philosophical foundation the theological edifice is to be
carefully raised. Promote the study of theology, Venerable Brethren, by
all means in your power, so that your clerics on leaving the seminaries
may carry with them a deep admiration and love of it, and always find in
it a source of delight. For "in the vast and varied abundance of studies
opening before the mind desirous of truth, it is known to everyone that
theology occupies such a commanding place, that according to an ancient
adage of the wise it is the duty of the other arts and sciences to serve
it, and to wait upon it after the manner of handmaidens."[25] We will add
that We deem worthy of praise those who with full respect for tradition,
the Fathers, and the ecclesiastical magisterium, endeavor, with
well-balanced judgment, and guided by Catholic principles (which is not
always the case), to illustrate positive theology by throwing upon it the
light of true history. It is certainly necessary that positive theology
should be held in greater appreciation than it has been in the past, but
this must be done without detriment to scholastic theology; and those are
to be disapproved as Modernists who exalt positive theology in such a way
as to seem to despise the scholastic.

47. With regard to secular studies, let it suffice to recall here what
our predecessor has admirably said: "Apply yourselves energetically to
the study of natural sciences: in which department the things that have
been so brilliantly discovered, and so usefully applied, to the
admiration of the present age, will be the object of praise and
commendation to those who come after us."[26] But this is to be done
without interfering with sacred studies, as Our same predecessor
prescribed in these most weighty words: "If you carefully search for the
cause of those errors you will find that it lies in the fact that in
these days when the natural sciences absorb so much study, the more
severe and lofty studies have been proportionately neglected--some of
them have almost passed into oblivion, some of them are pursued in a
half-hearted or superficial way, and, sad to say, now that the splendor
of the former estate is dimmed, they have been disfigured by perverse
doctrines and monstrous errors."[27] We ordain, therefore, that the study
of natural sciences in the seminaries be carried out according to this
law.

48. All these prescriptions, both Our own and those of Our predecessor,
are to be kept in view whenever there is question of choosing directors
and professors for seminaries and Catholic Universities. Anyone who in
any way is found to be tainted with Modernism is to be excluded without
compunction from these offices, whether of government or of teaching, and
those who already occupy them are to be removed. The same policy is to be
adopted towards those who openly or secretly lend countenance to
Modernism either by extolling the Modernists and excusing their culpable
conduct, or by carping at scholasticism, and the Fathers, and the
magisterium of the Church, or by refusing obedience to ecclesiastical
authority in any of its depositories; and towards those who show a love
of novelty in history, archaeology, biblical exegesis; and finally
towards those who neglect the sacred sciences or appear to prefer to them
the secular. In all this question of studies, Venerable Brethren, you
cannot be too watchful or too constant, but most of all in the choice of
professors, for as a rule the students are modeled after the pattern of
their masters. Strong in the consciousness of your duty, act always in
this matter with prudence and with vigor.

49. Equal diligence and severity are to be used in examining and
selecting candidates for Holy Orders. Far, far from the clergy be the
love of novelty! God hateth the proud and the obstinate mind. For the
future the doctorate of theology and canon law must never be conferred on
anyone who has not first of all made the regular course of scholastic
philosophy; if conferred, it shall be held as null and void. The rules
laid down in 1896 by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars for
the clerics, both secular and regular, of Italy, concerning the
frequenting of the Universities, We now decree to be extended to all
nation.[28] Clerics and priests inscribed in a Catholic Institute or
University must not in the future follow in civil Universities those
courses for which there are chairs in the Catholic Institutes to which
they belong. If this has been permitted anywhere in the past, We ordain
that it be not allowed for the future. Let the Bishops who form the
Governing Board of such Catholic Institutes or Universities watch with
all care that these Our commands be constantly observed.

50. It is also the duty of the Bishops to prevent writings of Modernists,
or whatever savors of Modernism or promotes it, from being read when they
have been published, and to hinder their publication when they have not.
No books or papers or periodicals whatever of this kind are to be
permitted to seminarists or university students. The injury to them would
be not less than that which is caused by immoral reading-- nay, it would
be greater, for such writings poison Christian life at its very fount.
The same decision is to be taken concerning the writings of some
Catholics, who, though not evilly disposed themselves, are ill-instructed
in theological studies and imbued with modern philosophy, and strive to
make this harmonize with the faith, and, as they say, to turn it to the
profit of the faith. The name and reputation of these authors cause them
to read without suspicion, and they are, therefore, all the more
dangerous in gradually preparing the way for Modernism.

51. To add some more general directions, Venerable Brethren, in a matter
of such moment, We order that you do everything in your power to drive
out of your dioceses, even by solemn interdict, any pernicious books that
may be in circulation there. The Holy See neglects no means to remove
writings of this kind, but their number has now grown to such an extent
that it is hardly possible to subject them all to censure. Hence it
happens sometimes that the remedy arrives too late, for the disease has
taken root during the delay. We will, therefore, that the Bishops putting
aside all fear and the prudence of the flesh, despising the clamor of
evil men, shall, gently, by all means, but firmly, do each his own part
in this work, remembering the injunctions of Leo XIII in the Apostolic
Constitution Officiorum: "Let the Ordinaries, acting in this also as
Delegates of the Apostolic See, exert themselves to proscribe and to put
out of reach of the faithful injurious books or other writings printed or
circulated in their dioceses."[29] In this passage the Bishops, it is
true, receive an authorization, but they have also a charge laid upon
them. Let no Bishop think that he fulfills his duty by denouncing to Us
one or two books, while a great many others of the same kind are being
published and circulated. Nor are you to be deterred by the fact that a
book has obtained elsewhere the permission which is commonly called the
Imprimatur, both because this may be merely simulated, and because it may
have been granted through carelessness or too much indulgence or
excessive trust placed in the author, which last has perhaps sometimes
happened in the religious orders. Besides, just as the same food does not
agree with everyone, it may happen that a book, harmless in one place,
may, on account of the different circumstances, be hurtful in another.
Should a Bishop, therefore, after having taken the advice of prudent
persons, deem it right to condemn any of such books in his diocese, We
give him ample faculty for the purpose and We lay upon him the obligation
of doing so. Let all this be done in a fitting manner, and in certain
cases it will suffice to restrict the prohibition to the clergy; but in
all cases it will be obligatory on Catholic booksellers not to put on
sale books condemned by the Bishop. And while We are treating of this
subject, We wish the Bishops to see to it that booksellers do not,
through desire for gain, engage in evil trade. It is certain that in the
catalogs of some of them the books of the Modernists are not infrequently
announced with no small praise. If they refuse obedience, let the
Bishops, after due admonition, have no hesitation in depriving them of
the title of Catholic booksellers. This applies, and with still more
reason, to those who have the title of Episcopal booksellers. If they
have that of Pontifical booksellers, let them be denounced to the
Apostolic See. Finally, We remind all of Article XXVI of the
above-mentioned Constitution Officiorum: "All those who have obtained an
apostolic faculty to read and keep forbidden books, are not thereby
authorized to read and keep books and periodicals forbidden by the local
Ordinaries unless the apostolic faculty expressly concedes permission to
read and keep books condemned by anyone whomsoever."

52. It is not enough to hinder the reading and the sale of bad books--it
is also necessary to prevent them from being published. Hence, let the
Bishops use the utmost strictness in granting permission to print. Under
the rules of the Constitution Officiorum, many publications require the
authorization of the Ordinary, and in certain dioceses (since the Bishop
cannot personally make himself acquainted with them all) it has been the
custom to have a suitable number of official censors for the examination
of writings. We have the highest esteem for this institution of censors,
and We not only exhort, but We order that it be extended to all dioceses.
In all episcopal Curias, therefore, let censors be appointed for the
revision of works intended for publication, and let the censors be chosen
from both ranks of the clergy--secular and regular --men whose age,
knowledge, and prudence will enable them to follow the safe and golden
means in their judgments. It shall be their office to examine everything
which requires permission for publication according to Articles XLI and
XLII of the above-mentioned Constitution. The censor shall give his
verdict in writing. If it be favorable, the Bishop will give the
permission for publication by the word Imprimatur, which must be preceded
by the Nihil obstat and the name of the censor. In the Roman Curia
official censors shall be appointed in the same way as elsewhere, and the
duty of nominating them shall appertain to the Master of the Sacred
Palace, after they have been proposed to the Cardinal Vicar and have been
approved and accepted by the Sovereign Pontiff. It will also be the
office of the Master of the Sacred Palace to select the censor for each
writing. Permission for publication will be granted by him as well as by
the Cardinal Vicar or his Vicegerent, and this permission, as above
prescribed, must he preceded by the Nihil obstat and the name of the
censor. Only on a very rare and exceptional occasion, and on the prudent
decision of the Bishop, shall it be possible to omit mention of the
censor. The name of the censor shall never be made known to the authors
until he shall have given a favorable decision, so that he may not have
to suffer inconvenience either while he is engaged in the examination of
a writing or in case he should withhold his approval. Censors shall never
be chosen from the religious orders until the opinion of the Provincial,
or in Rome, of the General, has been privately obtained, and the
Provincial or the General must give a conscientious account of the
character, knowledge, and orthodoxy of the candidate. We admonish
religious superiors of their most solemn duty never to allow anything to
be published by any of their subjects without permission from themselves
and from the Ordinary. Finally, We affirm and declare that the title of
censor with which a person may be honored has no value whatever, and can
never be adduced to give credit to the private opinions of him who holds
it.

53. Having said this much in general, We now ordain in particular a more
careful observance of Article XLII of the above-mentioned Constitution
Officiorum, according to which "it is forbidden to secular priests,
without the previous consent of the Ordinary, to undertake the editorship
of papers or periodicals." This permission shall be withdrawn from any
priest who makes a wrong use of it after having received an admonition
thereupon. With regard to priests who are correspondents or collaborators
of periodicals, as it happens not infrequently that they contribute
matter infected with Modernism to their papers or periodicals, let the
Bishops see to it that they do not offend in this manner; and if they do,
let them warn the offenders and prevent them from writing. We solemnly
charge in like manner the superiors of religious orders that they fulfill
the same duty, and should they fail in it, let the Bishops make due
provision with authority from the Supreme Pontiff. Let there be, as far
as this is possible, a special censor for newspapers and periodicals
written by Catholics. It shall be his office to read in due time each
number after it has been published, and if he find anything dangerous in
it let him order that it be corrected as soon as possible. The Bishop
shall have the same right even when the censor has seen nothing
objectionable in a publication.

54. We have already mentioned congresses and public gatherings as among
the means used by the Modernists to propagate and defend their opinions.
In the future, Bishops shall not permit congresses of priests except on
very rare occasions. When they do permit them it shall only be on
condition that matters appertaining to the Bishops or the Apostolic See
be not treated in them, and that no resolutions or petitions be allowed
that would imply a usurpation of sacred authority, and that absolutely
nothing be said in them which savors of Modernism, presbyterianism, or
laicism. At congresses of this kind, which can only be held after
permission in writing has been obtained in due time and for each case it
shall not be lawful for priests of other dioceses to be present without
the written permission of their Ordinary. Further, no priest must lose
sight of the solemn recommendation of Leo XIII: "Let priests hold as
sacred the authority of their pastors, let them take it for certain that
the sacerdotal ministry, if not exercised under the guidance of the
Bishops, can never be either holy, or very fruitful, or worthy of
respect."[30]

55. But of what avail, Venerable Brethren, will be all Our commands and
prescriptions if they be not dutifully and firmly carried out? In order
that this may be done it has seemed expedient to us to extend to all
dioceses the regulations which the Bishops of Umbria, with great wisdom,
laid down for theirs many years ago. "In order," they say, "to extirpate
the errors already propagated and to prevent their further diffusion, and
to remove those teachers of impiety through whom the pernicious effects
of such diffusion are being perpetuated, this sacred Assembly, following
the example of St. Charles Borromeo, has decided to establish in each of
the dioceses a Council consisting of approved members of both branches of
the clergy, which shall be charged with the task of noting the existence
of errors and the devices by which new ones are introduced and
propagated, and to inform the Bishop of the whole, so that he may take
counsel with them as to the best means for suppressing the evil at the
outset and preventing it spreading for the ruin of souls or, worse still,
gaining strength and growth."[31] We decree, therefore, that in every
diocese a council of this kind, which We are pleased to name the "Council
of Vigilance," be instituted without delay. The priests called to form
part in it shall be chosen somewhat after the manner above prescribed for
the censors, and they shall meet every two months on an appointed day in
the presence of the Bishop. They shall be bound to secrecy as to their
deliberations and decisions, and in their functions shall be included the
following: they shall watch most carefully for every trace and sign of
Modernism both in publications and in teaching, and to preserve the
clergy and the young from it they shall take all prudent, prompt, and
efficacious measures. Let them combat novelties of words, remembering the
admonitions of Leo XIII: "It is impossible to approve in Catholic
publications a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride
the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order
of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations of
the modern soul, on a new social vocation of the clergy, on a new
Christian civilization, and many other things of the same kind."[32]
Language of the kind here indicated is not to be tolerated either in
books or in lectures. The Councils must not neglect the books treating of
the pious traditions of different places or of sacred relics. Let them
not permit such questions to be discussed in journals or periodicals
destined to foster piety, either with expressions savoring of mockery or
contempt, or by dogmatic pronouncements, especially when, as is often the
case, what is stated as a certainty either does not pass the limits of
probability or is based on prejudiced opinion. Concerning sacred relics,
let this be the rule: if Bishops, who alone are judges in such matters,
know for certain that a relic is not genuine, let them remove it at once
from the veneration of the faithful; if the authentications of a relic
happen to have been lost through civil disturbances, or in any other way,
let it not be exposed for public veneration until the Bishop has verified
it. The argument of prescription or well-founded presumption is to have
weight only when devotion to a relic is commendable by reason of its
antiquity, according to the sense of the Decree issued in 1896 by the
Congregation of Indulgences and Sacred Relics: "Ancient relics are to
retain the veneration they have always enjoyed except when in individual
instances there are clear arguments that they are false or
superstitious." In passing judgment on pious traditions let it always be
borne in mind that in this matter the Church uses the greatest prudence,
and that she does not allow traditions of this kind to be narrated in
books except with the utmost caution and with the insertion of the
declaration imposed by Urban VIII; and even then she does not guarantee
the truth of the fact narrated; she simply does not forbid belief in
things for which human evidence is not wanting. On this matter the Sacred
Congregation of Rites, thirty years ago, decreed as follows: "These
apparitions or revelations have neither been approved nor condemned by
the Holy See, which has simply allowed them to be believed on purely
human faith, on the tradition which they relate, corroborated by
testimony and documents worthy of credence."[33] Anyone who follows this
rule has no cause to fear. For the devotion based on any apparition, in
so far as it regards the fact itself, that is to say, in so far as the
devotion is relative, always implies the condition of the fact being
true; while in so far as it is absolute, it is always based on the truth,
seeing that its object is the persons of the saints who are honored. The
same is true of relics. Finally, We entrust to the Councils of Vigilance
the duty of overlooking assiduously and diligently social institutions as
well as writings on social questions so that they may harbor no trace of
Modernism, but obey the prescriptions of the Roman Pontiffs.

56. Lest what We have laid down thus far should pass into oblivion, We
will and ordain that the Bishops of all dioceses, a year after the
publication of these letters and every three years thenceforward, furnish
the Holy See with a diligent and sworn report on the things which have
been decreed in this Our Letter, and on the doctrines that find currency
among the clergy, and especially in the seminaries and other Catholic
institutions, those not excepted which are not subject to the Ordinary,
and We impose the like obligation on the Generals of religious orders
with regard to those who are under them.

57. This, Venerable Brethren, is what We have thought it Our duty to
write to you for the salvation of all who believe. The adversaries of the
Church will doubtless abuse what We have said to refurbish the old
calumny by which We are traduced as the enemy of science and of the
progress of humanity. As a fresh answer to such accusations, which the
history of the Christian religion refutes by never-failing evidence, it
is Our intention to establish by every means in our power a special
Institute in which, through the co-operation of those Catholics who are
most eminent for their learning, the advance of science and every other
department of knowledge may be promoted under the guidance and teaching
of Catholic truth. God grant that We may happily realize Our design with
the assistance of all those who bear a sincere love for the Church of
Christ. But of this We propose to speak on another occasion.

Meanwhile, Venerable Brethren, fully confident in your zeal and energy,
We beseech for you with Our whole heart the abundance of heavenly light,
so that in the midst of this great danger to souls from the insidious
invasions of error upon every hand, you may see clearly what ought to be
done, and labor to do it with all your strength and courage. May Jesus
Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, be with you in His power;
and may the Immaculate Virgin, the destroyer of all heresies, be with you
by her prayers and aid. And We, as a pledge of Our affection and of the
Divine solace in adversity, most lovingly grant to you, your clergy and
people, the Apostolic Benediction.

58. Given at St. Peter's, Rome, September 8, 1907, in the fifth year of
Our Pontificate. PIUS X, POPE